Missions on Point

After 5-1/2 years of weekly Friday podcasts, we are bringing the Missions on Point podcast to the next stage. Lord willing, it has been and will continue to be a source of challenge, encouragement, and information for church leaders, their missionaries, and mission-sending organizations. We may add more to the Missions on Point podcasts, but it won't be every Friday; episodes may be longer and mor...

 This introduction to the biblical principle of the centrality of the Church and missions was actually published as Missions on Point. You can get it through Amazon.com. This is the fire in the engine and the main thrust of all of our teaching and ministry over the last 30 years. Please go back to the Missions on Point episodes and find the entire list, which this episode is just the beginning of....

A good Missions Handbook resolves many debates and provides context for the direction and strategic development of missions in your church by grounding decisions in Scripture. Start with the simplest nuts and bolts, ensuring each policy and procedure aligns with biblical principles and clear scriptural definitions. This biblical foundation provides the framework for your missions team's decision-m...

I love this topic. I've not found anyone else who talks about it. We've all met missions junkies. You probably have at least one in your church. They are people who love to talk about missions, love it when people pay for them to go "do" missions (but only short-term). They don't have the focus and intensity to become a long-term missionary. It's about THEIR experience, THEIR selfies, THEIR "calli...

Visiting your missionary on the field is one of the sweetest blessings as a church leader. You get to see them in context, feel, hear, smell, taste, and touch their world. Yet it is also an earnest endeavor to shepherd them well, even to delve into the hard things in their life. Plan well. Let them know that your visit is not as a tourist, not as a dignitary or featured guest, but simply as a shep...

Business As Missions (BAM) has been the darling and the bane of attempts to reach "closed" countries with the Gospel. As Greg Livingstone has said, "You are either a job taker, a job maker, or a job faker." Most BAM out in the wild is job faking. While there is good work to be done by sincere Christians creating God-honoring businesses, they are rarely aimed at the end goal of establishing and str...

Church-based missionary training is a huge, paradigm-shifting undertaking. But, if you don't want your sent-ones to be cannon fodder, you'd better wake up and take note. Sound church-based, guided missionary training will make the difference between burnout and longevity, between frustration and effectiveness, between being crushed and thriving. Listen and learn.

Imagine you had to train someone from your church to become your associate pastor. Then add layers of training in church planting, cross-cultural exposure, leadership training, and becoming an elder. There you have it, in a simple form; that's how you train a church member to become a missionary. This episode will guide your thinking. Look for lots more on Propempo.com, SendForward.org, and the Mi...

We actually address the issue of candidate identification in other series of the Missions on Point podcast. This one is the first of four in an overview of sending, equipping, and shepherding missionaries.  I maintain that having a constant stream of equipping and leadership training in your church is absent in most churches. That's why it's so important to begin to address it. The answers to find...

This episode, featuring The Best of Missions on Point, looks at episode 79. The "Missiology You Need to Know" series continues with The Missionary Must Reproduce Himself. This seems as obvious as the nose on your face. However, missionaries tend to copy the forms of the churches in which they grew up and don't learn because of the absence of emphasizing this in ministry training schools.  This pri...

Perhaps you didn't think you needed to know about missiology, but understanding the priorities and foundation of practical missionary missiology is essential to comprehend the process of sending missionaries from your Church and supporting high-quality missionaries.  Your understanding of key missiological principles will significantly aid you in grasping and empathizing with the work and ministry...

The "Best of" series is one of my favorites. It deals with subjects that are almost never admitted to or discussed in public. The angst that those "left behind" by their missionary family member or good friend rivals the angst caused by them toward their dear one. Those feelings of loss or abandonment are real. Shortsighted, damaging perhaps, but real to the "sufferer." So, those around them need...

This "Best of" episode is a synopsis of six major teaching/training topics we covered in 2-day Propempo seminars for churches seeking to learn how to become a sending church. This first one, V for Vision, is a great starting point for getting leadership on board with the concept of a biblical missions-sending church. Please consider sharing this podcast with others and supporting us to keep us goi...

Churches, including the missions ministries, tend to evaluate themselves based on metrics from previous years. The same metrics, without reference to an external objective benchmark. Sound familiar? The Church Missions Profile is your ticket to clearer standards. Visit  SendForward.org  and click on the Church Missions Profile link to learn more. The episode replays and overview of the first three...

Books are an invaluable resource to us all, especially when you get the right ones! Here's my list of high-impact mission books. Visit  SendForward.org/Store to explore some of these resources and others that have proven helpful to many. Email me to let me know your thoughts: ministry (at) Propempo.com Go to Propempo.com to find transcripts of every podcast episode -- https://propempo.com/resource...

This is a grand series from the best of Missions on Point. It begins a series on discovering missions through the Bible. This first episode in that series is the glory of God. What could be higher and grander and more noble than that?  This episode begins to explore the biblical content, showing how it's easy to see, if you have eyes to see it, the great missions themes throughout the whole Bible....

Churches can easily neglect the essential ministry of the Missions Committee or Team. The series on Missions Committee Essentials, beginning from the replay of Episode 43, provides practical guidance to help start or restart an effective Missions Team. If your church wants to be missions-minded, the Missions Committee needs to be reinforced and refocused so that it can be used to effectively mobil...

The "Best of" episode features the first of a short series on the most fundamental truths of missions from the Bible for today. This episode works through an overview of key Scriptures that establish the basis for the centrality of the local church in God's purposes. The local church is NOT the universal church. The universal church does not have the same call, commission, or consequence in God's...

Historically, we've battled with the wrong assumption that parachurch missions agencies own world missions ministry. It was true in 1900! It is largely accurate in 2025! This episode calls Pastors to lead their local church to ownership of global missions as the church equips, sends, and shepherds missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission. The Pastor must step up in faithfulness to this biblica...

Starting with validating the individual missionary candidate's missionary call through hands-on oversight and observation, the church equips him or her to be sent. Character, convictions, and proven competencies to do the work of a missionary are worked out in the laboratory of local church ministry. The local church helps identify the field, the missions agency partner, and other supporting churc...

This episode continues the biblical case for the centrality of the local church in missions - as the beginning and the end, the progenitor and the purpose, the cause and result of missions to all people groups of the earth. The conclusion of this episode is that: Churches need to take their responsibility to step up their rightful ownership of missions. Missions sending organizations and parachurc...

This is a truth that has long been missing in our Western missions mindset. Everyone has been so busy and so hyped on evangelism and humanitarian issues that the heart of the biblical goal of missions has been overlooked. It is right there in Scripture for those who seriously care about what the Bible has to say, without truncating or embellishing it for their own purposes. The interpretation and...

This "Best of" replay of Episode 2 takes me back to 1974, when the Lord opened my eyes to interpretive keys to Ephesians 3 and burned it into my heart as my missionary calling. The centrality of the local church in missions practically explodes out of Ephesians 3 and should NEVER be neglected in teaching and preaching the passage, including its connection to missions. We said it before; we say it...

Celebrating five years of the Missions on Point podcast prompts us to reflect on "the best of Missions on Point." This episode marks the first in a series that revisits and replays podcasts featuring key concepts for Propempo International and the biblical, local-church-centered missions philosophy. This first one is an explanation of the biblical word, from Greek, "propempo." It demonstrates how...

We pause to reflect on God's grace and goodness to and through the Missions on Point podcast as we complete five years of weekly episodes (without missing or repeating!). We are grateful to God, to our listeners, and my associate, Joel Hollins, for making it possible to produce this podcast.  We ask that you, our listeners, help with getting the word out to share this great content to missions-min...